The only thing that truly levels the playing field for EVERYONE is time.

Regardless of how rich, poor, educated, gifted, cursed or talented each of us may be, the amount of time in each day remains the same for all of us. It is the only true commodity.

You influence people to make different decisions by changing the perspective of time. Changing one’s perspective of time has an impact on the way they feel and make decisions about things.

Every time you meet someone for the first time they subconsciously cross-reference you with every other person that they have previously met in life.

And the truth of the matter is that they’ve probably had more negative experiences with people than positive ones. Therefore, when you meet someone for the first time, it’s important that you: a.) differentiate yourself from everyone else in their past and b.) move their filter of time to the past, present or future.

People respond emotionally to people, places or things that stimulate them; this includes you. Whether your audience realizes it or not, both positive and negative experiences are being triggered when they meet someone like you for the first time. The ironic thing is that the response that you evoke in your audience doesn’t necessarily have to be directly linked to you. It’s linked to their past experience of someone that reminds them of you.

So before you’ve even uttered one single word to your target, they’ve already formulated a subconscious opinion of you.

Here’s what’s really interesting.

 Even if you completely change the way your target thinks about you because of your powerful influential tactics, they will eventually return to their original opinion of you. This happens for a number of reasons with the first 2 being that they will come across other people who fall into the same category as you who (in their mind) solidify their assumptions as being correct and secondly, opinions don’t just diminish that quickly.

For these reasons, it’s extremely important that you become an expert in altering time in their mind. When you can effectively transition your target mentally from one time frame to another, their past thoughts, emotions or opinions won’t have the same effect on them.

People experience time in 3 ways: past, present and future. Let’s take a closer look at each.

Past: Some people use past experiences as their sole frame of reference when making decisions about the present or the future. They are very skeptical and guarded but they also make fewer mistakes because they think this way. They also sometimes miss out on some of the great things that life has to offer because they rarely take chances. This is an important point to remember.

Present: People who live in the present moment give little though to the past or future and as a result don’t worry or get stressed out much. The downside to their method of making decisions is that they rarely think of consequences and instead seek immediate gratification.

Future: People who live in the future will sacrifice instant gratification for a better result down the road. They are usually detailed planners who love to organize and think things through. To them, the past (whether good or bad) has little relevance; if any at all.

Once you understand how people relate to time, you can equip yourself to influence them adapting to how they see things – or if they are not seeing things your way – you can change their perspective by taking them to another time frame.

For example, if they are hung up on a past failure, show them why the future is different. If they are hesitant about how the decision will affect their future, show them how other people who made similar decisions benefited in the past.